Washington needs to cut its uncertainty tax on America

James Pethokoukis | October 17, 2013, 9:43 am

 

In a way, uncertainty isn’t a bad thing. Companies shouldn’t be guaranteed market share or customer loyalty. Not knowing when a disruptive competitor might create a some killer new product or service helps keep private-sector management on its toes — and innovative. Or should. “Only the paranoid survive,” as former Intel CEO Andy Grove famously put it.
 
But uncertainty about government is another matter. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist #62:

Great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? …  In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

Read full article here from AEI-Ideas